


living in the afterburn

by sungods



Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Character Study, Families of Choice, Gen, Multi, Permanent Major Character Death, Temporary Character Death, Trans Nile, trans everyone tbh
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-16
Updated: 2020-10-06
Packaged: 2021-03-06 20:36:11
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 4
Words: 3,158
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26494984
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sungods/pseuds/sungods
Summary: Throughout her years, even before her first death, she’s made a habit of cataloging the exact distance she was from her hometown of Chicago. It was her little ritual, pulling up either her phone or a map, spanning the distance with her fingers. 6,987 miles, and then 4,130 miles, 3,879 miles,  5,148 miles, on and on and on.It hurt, but it was good too, seeing how lives kept moving, kept growing and changing. The world turned and Nile and her new family walked through it. Time like water. You’d think one could get used to physical distance.But nothing could have really prepared her for this.A study of Nile through time.In which I compile my Nile week ficlets in an order that makes sense to me
Relationships: Andy | Andromache of Scythia/Quynh | Noriko, Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova, Nile Freeman/Original Character
Comments: 11
Kudos: 70





	1. and i would stay a while longer

**Author's Note:**

> thank you, in advance, for reading- i'm really bad at replying back to comments because of ~anxiety~ but if you choose to leave a comment, know that i read it and appreciated it.
> 
> i participated in [nile week](https://nilefreemanweek.tumblr.com/) on tumblr!! it's the first time i've ever done a fanweek and i really enjoyed myself even though i got hit by the writer's block and am running kind of late? regardless, i'm really proud of what i've managed to write and i hope you like what i've done with miss freeman.
> 
> disclaimer: i am neither black nor a trans woman, althought i am an asian non-binary person, so any inaccuracies that might arise are entirely on me. 100% open to constructive criticism, we only grow through making mistakes, after all.

On Nile’s sixth birthday, her aunt and uncle from Detroit drove the four hours to come to her party. They’d brought her cousins and food, and best of all, water guns, and they’d spent a breathless afternoon spritzing each other, the sun turning their shots to rainbow mist in the summer air. When she and her cousins had all tired each other out, they’d lain in a big heap on the floor, the ceiling fan wheeling lazily above. Her father couldn’t make it home to kiss her on the forehead and squeeze her cheeks, “ _Happy birthday baby, you’re getting big!_ ” But right now that didn’t weigh too heavily on her young mind. When she’d had enough of waiting, she started ripping into her presents. Books, some toys in shades of blue and green, and dismally, _socks_ , though as she glared around the giggling circle of her family, her little brother’s toothy smile was happy enough to make the retaliatory punch to the shoulder not too hard.

She thanked everyone very politely for their presents and waved hard enough to make her arms hurt as one by one her relatives pulled out of the street, back to their respective homes. Now, she remembers the shine of the setting sun on her aunt’s windshield and their wide, bright smiles, the grit of the pavement on her bare feet. Now, she wonders if they’d had any inkling of the incoming significance of their gift to her, that day. She thinks about it a lot, even decades later. How would her life have changed, been different?

Their gift to her had been a heavy book, huge to her little hands. The pictures on the cover had drawn her in first. She’d known of the pyramids, somehow, but as she went through the pages, her small mind sucking in all the new information like a sponge, this ancient civilisation entranced her. The large font and brightly coloured diagrams weren’t that detailed, and much later when she learnt more about her old phase, some of the facts presented in the children’s book were entirely inaccurate. But at the time it didn’t matter. Here was a world straight from a fantasy, except it had been _real_.

Some parts were too complicated for her to understand and for that she curled up in the crook of her mother’s arms, let her voice lull her to sleep. _The Nile river is the longest waterway in the world at 6650 km. Throughout the history of Egypt, the river has been the lifeblood of civilisations._ A kiss to the side of her head and she giggles, in this golden memory of the child she used to be. She’s aware of the role nostalgia plays in these memories, in these simpler times when her entire world was no bigger than a city block. _The lifeblood of civilisations_ , she whispers to herself what she’s learnt in the dark, committing it all to memory. She likes how it feels on her tongue, and keeps it close to her heart.

Not too long later, her hands shake as she woodenly recites to her mother the words she’d spent months working on. Logically, she knows she’s got nothing to be afraid of, and her mother does not disappoint as she sweeps her up into a big hug, holding her while she cries from the sheer _relief_ of being able to be honest, finally. The next time her father comes home, she tells him with a lot more confidence and he swings her over his head, kisses her on the forehead like he’s always done. Says, _I always wanted a daughter_ , and everything is perfect, almost too good to be true.

Time keeps her on her toes, keeps her moving forwards. It takes her father, then it takes her away from her mother and brother, but she finds her way back only to lose them again. It washes over her like a rock in a river, and she grieves, and she cries and some days it feels like her heart is going to split clean in two. But there are good days, always, when she feels like she’s doing some good. When she is good, and she lies awake in the morning and watches a ceiling fan go round, and thinks, _everything is going to be fine_.

She’s Nile fucking Freeman. Of course it is. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> chapter name taken from if we're being honest by novo amor! it's a really lovely song so check it out  
> this was day 5, nile + identity


	2. at least i know you're trying

She wakes to the taste of blood.

Wrench the covers back, stumble to the bathroom. Spit and gag into the toilet until her heart stops slamming against her ribcage. A step by step process. She follows it through flawlessly, as good at following orders as she’s ever been, and it’s only until she tips her weight back so she’s not half in the toilet bowl does she really register a gentle pull as someone holds her braids back, and another hand rubs soothing circles into the small of her back. She coughs again, and behind her, achingly gentle, _I have you, just breathe_. 

Andy and Nicky sit on the floor behind and beside her, and as she sucks air back into too-tight lungs, Joe joins them on the floor, bleary eyed and blinking sleepily. She’d giggle if she wasn’t remembering how to breathe. Three of the world’s most formidable people, crowded into a tiny mint-tiled ensuite, watching her shake apart after a nightmare borne of memory. She tries for a smile. God, this is embarrassing. 

“Sorry for waking you guys up.”

Nicky’s already shaking his head before she’s finished speaking. “No, Nile, it’s alright. Do you want to talk about it?”

Nile looks to Andy, as she seems to be doing more and more these days. In the months after… well, everything, she’s learnt so much from the ancient warrior that she’s surprised she still has room in her head. Andy gives her a look that is impressively a combination of unrelenting, encouraging, and full of concern. She coughs again and sighs, her hand drifting towards her throat. A flash of silver metal and choking on her own blood. She feels better from before but still sick.

“First death. Again. Does it ever stop?”

Her words sound plaintive even to her, and she winces internally. The trio look at each other, seriously considering her question.

“I had nightmares about Nicky killing me for decades,” offers Joe, the sleepy look in his eyes replaced with warmth for her. “It grew less regular, over time. Used to have them even after we’d re-met and were becoming… well, friendlier. But they stop, Nile, I promise. It gets easier.”

“But _when_?” she demands, fingers twisting around the fine chain around her neck. She doesn’t want to be rude, but she’s so _tired_ , and their looks of concern are making her want to shrink into a little ball and roll right the fuck away. She’s always been _capable_ Nile, _confident_ Nile, the big sister, the shoulder to cry on. Being looked after instead of doing the looking after sits strange and unwieldy on her shoulders. “I just want a full night of sleep, guys. Between the dreams of Quynh, and all the other shit-” she means the dreams of the people she’s killed “- I’m not getting any damn rest and waking up the rest of you too.”

It’s Andy who replies, this time, her tired eyes impossibly gentle.

“Nile, we don’t have any easy answers. But we don’t mind waking up when you have nightmares, or holding your hair back, or talking about it. We just want you to be alright. And you will be, with time. But in the meanwhile, we’re here. We look after each other. It’s how it works.”

Joe smiles, “And anyway, you’re not even being a nuisance. Do you know how many _times_ me and Nicky had to carry Booker to bed before he drowned himself vomiting into the toilet?”

Despite everything, a giggle bubbles it’s way out of Nile’s throat, and they’re all laughing quietly on the floor now. Maybe it’s a bit mean laughing at the absent man’s expense, but Nile’s getting it, even if it’s coming a little slow. The look in Joe’s eyes, Nicky holding back her braids, Andy’s soothing, certain words. It’s love, what they have for her, and they really do mean it when they say they’re looking out for her. As Andy helps her to her feet and Nicky turns the tap on (pretending to do it to flick water at Joe, who laughs like a child, delighted) in prep for her washing her face and mouth, she’s beginning to understand them.

It’s not her family, not really. Her family is a million miles away and eventually, Copley says it’ll be safe enough to contact them, maybe even go see them before time takes them away from her. But it’s _a_ family, and there’s an open invite. She _can_ be a part of both, if she gets used to it. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> chapter name was taken from black dog by arlo parks, and the actual title of the whole fic was also taken from an arlo parks song dgfhjk  
> this was nile + comfort


	3. as the years flew by

It’s high summer on the western steppes, sweat is dripping down Nile’s back, and with one last shovelful of earth, it’s done.

Nile has the absurd urge to laugh. It’s just so… anticlimactic. There’s a cool breeze on her cheeks despite the heat and the oldest woman in the history of the world is in the ground. Nothing makes any sense anymore. She’d never really used that old phrase, _having the rug pulled out from under you_ , but here it is, that sick unsteady feeling of nothing in the world ever being right again. Tears have fallen and dried and her lips taste of salt.

She lets the shovel fall and steps away, into Joe’s waiting arms. He and Nicky have that look in their eyes again, like someone had reached into their brain and scooped out something vital. Booker is nursing the first bit of alcohol she’d seen around him in decades, staring hard enough at the fresh, wet earth of Andy’s grave like he can bring her back through sheer force of will. And Quynh…

She’s sitting back where they’d left her, in the backseat of the ancient car they’d managed to buy. It was honestly a testament to how far she’d come, being able to be in that vehicle. Intense claustrophobia had followed her like a ghost for nearly twenty years after she’d clawed her way back to the surface. As Nile meets her eyes, she nods, moving slow like her body is as ancient as she is, and gets out of the car. They make a ring around Andy’s grave, leaning into one another. Booker snuffles and Quynh gently extricates the glass bottle from his hands before he can drop it, screwing back on the lid. It’s still mostly full. His tolerance has really gone to shit. Nile makes a note to watch him, after, to make sure he doesn’t slip down that spiral that had resulted in the mess of her first few deaths and that early fracturing of their family. It has been nearly seventy years since, and old wounds are for the most part healed, but Joe still tenses whenever he smells smoke and Nile sometimes has the most vivid nightmares of falling from impossibly high places.

Quynh clears her throat, her fingers fluttering like moths, looking for some light to press against. Silently, Booker takes one of her hands and Nile takes another. They wait for her to collect the words. She breathes in deep, tears slipping down the slope of her nose, and Nile finds fresh ones welling in her eyes too.

Quynh opens her mouth. Closes it again, presses her lips together, her jaw working furiously. Her eyes are as wild as they had been all those years ago when she’d been fresh out the ocean, and for a moment Nile is deathly afraid for the ancient warrior. What did she know of loss? Quynh had been ripped from the world and deposited back onto its shores, only to lose her soulmate after less than a century. It was a wonder she was moving. But it’s difficult, and Nile can see it. The older woman is run through, incandescent with grief. She swallows, and in a whisper so broken it burns, Quynh begins.

She starts in the desert, in the beginning, but skips backwards and forwards, sliding sideways through time. A moment here, a year there. A smile over a campfire, quiet kisses under an endless night sky. Quynh’s hand trembles in Nile’s but she doesn’t stop, doesn’t slow. A million lives pour from her tongue in as many languages. Here, and here, when they’d done this and this and this. Andy’s life opens out like a map before them, painted in bright colour with Quynh’s words. So much pain, over the millennia. Suffering unimaginable, borne and inflicted. But so much love, too.

At some stage, the shadows lengthening at their feet, Quynh’s voice falters, and Joe takes over. He speaks of staring into the horizon, into the depths of the sea, of a sadness so profound it was nearly insanity. Quynh’s crying in earnest now but she does not let go of Nile or Booker, just greedily drinks in Joe’s words as he speaks of Andy. She’s gripping Nile’s hand tight enough to hurt, but Nile just holds on tighter, breathing in the summer air, letting it fill her up, wash her out. Joe slows a little when he reaches the part where Booker enters the picture. Just looks at the other man quizzically, but Booker shakes his head, mute and still staring at the upturned earth of Andy’s grave. Mission after mission, saving as many as they can but still losing. Joe speaks with sorrow of Andy’s dwindling faith, and then it’s Nile’s turn.

God. Oh god. Where does she begin?

She starts at the beginning, and Booker huffs out a laugh as she runs through those chaotic early years. In hindsight, she’d been so young, so fresh with grief and in a world that had been upturned into something nigh unrecognizable. But there was Andy, and even though she’d lost her immortality, there was just something about her, something rock solidly steady. Sister, friend, family. Nile had lost everything in those first few days. But Andy had been there, to bring her to the rest of them, to help keep her living rather than just alive. 

And now she’s just… gone.

She’s not sure how she ends up this way, but she’s on her knees in front of Andy’s grave, and the rest of her family have come around her, ringing her with arms and warm comfort. She cries into someone’s shoulder, and feels someone, Quynh maybe, stroking the small of her back. _It’s alright, we have you. We’re still here._

They get up much later, sky dark and starless (the pollution levels are, finally, on a downward trend, but even here in the wilds where humans have not lived for many years, the stars are still hidden from sight. Nile misses them, but the earth is healing, at least). She’s leaning on someone and someone’s leaning on her and they walk, slow with grief and clutching each other like lifelines, back to the car. 

Nile misses Andy like a limb, the same way she misses her brother and her mother, lost so long ago. But now she knows grief intimately, and she knows this, at least.

She’ll be okay. There’s always tomorrow.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the chapter title was taken from 'dear april' by frank ocean  
> this wasn't for nile week but it runs directly into nile + alone time which will be up next


	4. what we had won't be the same now

She doesn’t usually do this, but hell, maybe she should do it more.

After Andy’s funeral, they split up. They’d all been together for most of the last decade, crammed into that little cottage in the fields as they were selfish for a moment, ignored the world for a little bit, made the most of what time they had left. Andy had been still bright, still clear eyed and sharp tongued but she’d been _frail_ , shockingly so. It’d been strange, to watch first booker and Quynh then Joe and Nicky take separate cars and just… go. For maybe a week she swept up the cottage, made everything perfectly neat. She knew they wouldn’t be coming back to this particular safe house for a long, long time.

Did it feel like she’d been abandoned? Not really. When Joe and Nicky had first, tentatively broached the subject of maybe splitting up for a while, she’d been the third to support the idea. Quynh next, and it haunted her, you could see it in her eyes, to exist in the exact same space Andy no longer did. She needed to see the world again. Booker had been reluctant, even fought it a little. But he eventually he saw it. They needed a little space to recalibrate, work out who they were without seeing each other constantly. And fuck if Nile didn’t appreciate having some quiet in the house, finally.

But even the house got too much. She turned a corner and kept expecting to see Andy on the couch, swearing at the tv, or Andy ever-so-slowly making her way up the stairs, her limbs still holding that ancient grace even though it had been slowed by time. It was _Andy’s_ place, and Nile needed one of her own. So, she locked the door behind her and started walking. 

It took maybe a month before she got to a proper city. A lot of the towns were really fucking tiny and the cities spread out, sprawling things that crawled up towards the sky like plants to the sun. The language here kept changing, but out of the immortals she’d always been the best at keeping up with the times, so she managed to find herself some work and a landlord (still? They still fucking existed?) uninterested enough to wonder why she paid in hard credits and not via link. And then she had her own apartment, for the first time in decades.

The furniture was astoundingly shitty and she’d probably have to replace it soon before it gave her something to be sorry about, but she flopped down on the sofa and watched the sun set, not really thinking, not really planning. Even though the smog kind of depressed her on some level, the haze that the sun spread through the sky as it sunk below the buildings was… beautiful. She’d been so surrounded by those endless grassy plains and the warm uncompromising love of her team, her family, that this new existence, just another face in a crowd, in a city of strangers, felt like a new life entirely.

_Chin up, Nile Freeman. You’ve got this._

She got up and ordered something quick and greasy to be delivered so she didn’t need to get her boots on. Switched the lights down low, turned on a little Frank Ocean, still good even after decades and decades and dozens of lives. Danced by herself on her apartment floor, listening to the sound of the city around her.

 _But you will make something_  
 _And it’ll take you through_  
 _It’ll wake you up again_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the chapter title was taken from 'dear april' by frank ocean  
> this was nile + alone time


End file.
